SEO for Beginners: The First Things You Should Learn

SEO is one big ocean of things you need to grasp. You might even feel intimidated as a beginner, because is reality, SEO is not simple at all. It is a mix of different practices and there is no “one size fits all” solution. But on the other hand, it is not rocket science. It is rather are set of components that share the same or similar core, making it learnable even for newbies. This is our simple SEO for beginners guide so you can determine the things you need to learn first when diving in the world of SEO!

1. The General Image

The first thing we must mention when it comes to SEO for beginners is that you need to view SEO as a one big general picture. Leave all the bits and bobs for later. As someone who is just starting, you need to grasp the concept as a whole – that SEO is a set of different actions you do in order to optimize your website according to the search engine standards so it appears high (best if on first 3 pages) in search results for specific keywords.

2. The Authority of Your Website

The most important metrics to keep in mind are the domain authority and the page authority. These metrics are core values and crucial for the SEO for beginners. Simply put, domain authority indicates how trustworthy your website is, based on the backlinks you have received (must be of high quality of course) and the age of your domain (when it was registered). Page authority is basically the same thing, but it refers to pages separately.

3. On-Site SEO

We already spoke about on-site SEO for beginners. What it does, it makes your website more appealing and more indexable in the world of search engines. There are many different practices you can do, all of them fairly easy. And while they might not influence the bigger picture by far, they are still a must when you start optimizing your website.

4. Content and Keywords

We have mentioned thousands of times so far that content is among the most important things on your website. Why? Because that’s where keywords come from. By having high-quality and keyword optimized content, you are one step closer to ranking for the keywords you are targeting.

5. Link Building

Another very important thing when it comes to SEO for beginners. The better the quality of your links, the more exposure your website gains. Internal linking is needed, but links that come from external sources are even more important. That indicates that your website is trustworthy and increases the link juice metric, directly influencing your ranking on search engines.

6. Keyword Research

In order to rank for keywords, you need to know which keywords you need to target. Before anything else, you need to determine the search volume of the keywords and the competition on them. Start by targeting long tail keywords which have a decent volume on search results. Think as the users think – how users type in their search queries is the place to start.

7. Adjusting

SEO is a process of trial and error. What you need to understand is that you cannot always get it right from the first try. Contrary, you need to set a strategy up, follow the results, analyze the metrics and adjust your plan according to the data you receive. Analyzing the results obtained with SEO is extremely important and you should never forget to do that.